"CelebrityChef" news and stories

Wolfgang Puck. Photo: Lisa Romerein.

Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck has been sued over his attempt to develop the .food domain in cyberspace.

Minds+Machines, a company that had partnered with the Spago restaurant owner on the project, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court on Tuesday alleging breach of contract as well as tortious interference and fraud on the part of Puck's wife, Gelila. The suit demands $5 million from the Pucks.

Earlier this year, Wolfgang Puck and Gelila Puck had announced their partnership with the company to develop .food Internet addresses.

"This is a great way for the finest food enterprises to stand out from the crowd on the Internet," Puck said in June. "Owning a .FOOD address is like opening a business on the best street in any city in the world."

Humble pie is something chef Gordon Ramsay says "I'll be eating for breakfast for the rest of my life" after the "Hell's Kitchen" host apologized for a sexist rant at the Melbourne Good Food and Wine Show that led to a very public spat with a journalist.

Ramsay apologized Wednesday for comparing Australian TV newscaster Tracy Grimshaw to a pig. He said he knew he'd gone too far when his mother phoned him in a huff.

"When your mum rings you, and it's a bollocking down the telephone, then of course you start to get the picture," he told Grimshaw's program "A Current Affair."

Chef Gordon Ramsay is in hot water again thanks to his foul mouth.

On Saturday, the "Hell's Kitchen" host compared an Australian TV newscaster to a pig and allegedly insinuated she was a lesbian, according to reports. Ramsay made the comments during a cooking demonstration at the Melbourne Good Food and Wine Show, one day after an interview with the journalist, Tracy Grimshaw.

The Melbourne Sunday Herald Sun reported that Ramsay showed the crowd of 3,000 a photograph of a naked woman with "the features of a pig" and compared her to Grimshaw.

YouTube video of the incident shows Ramsay telling the crowd: "Look who I sat next to on the plane at Qantas," as the image of the naked pig woman and a photo of Miss Piggy are shown. "There she is, oh Jesus, I'm not going to tell you her name but it begins with T." He then says, "It's a joke."

But the ensuing firestorm prompted Grimshaw to defend herself Monday. "He says it was a joke. Well not to me or to anyone who cares about me," she said in a televised response. "Truly I wonder how many people would laugh if they were effectively described as 'an old ugly pig.' How is that funny exactly? And worse, it's not even witty."

See her response after the jump.

Several things I did not know about Bobby Flay before our brief, but amusing phone chat last week:

1. He has a trademark* on the term "crunchify" -- which means to add potato or tortilla chips to a sandwich or burger for the express purpose of introducing a textural element.

2. He's Churchill Downs' official Kentucky Derby Party Host. Though actually that puts to rest the nagging questions I'd had as to why a born and bred New Yorker would put a Hot Brown sandwich (it's a Bluegrass State thing) on his menu at Bar Americain.

3. Chips, dips and burgers for the Superbowl celebration chez Flay? Nope -- he's a paella man for big parties.

4. Holy heck, is he an entertaining radio host.

Bobby Flay Radio is a limited run series wherein the titular host waxes authoritative on subjects ranging from football, personal style, dating, and oh yeah -- food. While an audio-only cooking show might seems a tad spare, Flay manages to demo a Sandwich of the Week, conduct on-air taste tests (consisting largely of potato chip bags being opened loudly in front of open microphones) and dispense hardcore cooking advice to callers in a manner appealing enough to make one want to ratchet up the caliber of one's lunch plans once the show wraps at noon.

Bonus -- occasionally his wife, actress Stephanie March, shares mike duties and misses not a single chance to rebut his claims or bust his chops. A Burns & Allen in the making? Dunno -- how 'bout giving 'em more than five weeks to find out, Sirius?


Bobby Flay Radio airs on Sirius / XM Channel 108 from 10-12 on Thursdays (replaying Saturday and Sunday from 3-5) through February 5th. Don't subscribe? Sign up for a free online trial.

Bobby Flay Radio on Sirius


*Thank you to eagle-eyed poster Matt who pointed out that it's a trademark rather than a copyright, as I'd previously written.

.000001%* of the population will be paid actual cash money to step foot into the on deck circle at Yankee Stadium. Still, that doesn't stop hordes of fans from TiVoing Inside Baseball, poring over box scores and suiting up in team regalia on game day. For some of us, food holds an equally compelling balance of gut-level devotion and wonkish stat-based compulsion. A reservation at elBulli is akin to scoring home team dugout seats for the seventh game of the World Series. Food fans -- here's your program.

It's said that 2,000,000 requests a year come in for just 8000 seats at Ferran Adrià's Spanish temple of molecular gastronomy. The closest many of us will come is grazing through this brand new 528 page play-by-play, A Day at elBulli An insight into the the ideas, methods and creativity of Ferran Adrià. It's not so much the common parlance's "food porn" as it is a post-millennial culinary junkie's process orgy, documenting each staff motion and motivation, every microgram of alginate and liquid nitrogen, and fetishistically breaking down quantity and custom and customer/server semiotics.

The proverbial sausage has never been so obsessively, graphically made for public consumption, and rarely has it been so deliciously presented. There are pleasing pictures and recipes, to be sure (Hazelnut praline air, anyone? Perhaps some Garrapi-nitro pine nuts?), but sans easy access to an Isomalt-R-Us, it's a fever-dream cookbook. It is, however, a deeply heartening food-ifesto.